Saturday, October 29, 2005

Notre Dame

Notre Dame has given football coach Charlie Weiss a 10 year contract extension after starting his first season 5-2. Before the season, they fired Tyrone Willingham after only 3 years. In his first year, at this point, Willingham had a 7-0 record coaching a team that had performed badly the previous year. Willingham had a great track record--he had taken Stanford, hardly a football powerhouse, to the Rose Bowl, and he was very highly regarded as a teacher and mentor for his players.

In other news, the recent survey that found only 2 percent of African Americans gave George Bush a positive approval rating kind of came and went without much comment in the media. Maybe it just speaks for itself (and maybe it isn't entirely accurate--other polls have it up around 10 percent which is shocking enough). But is there a more striking statistic that reflects that things just aren't right in our nation of individuals?

The Notre Dame matter may be just about sports. But unfortunately, despite the brief moment offered by Katrina, sports is one of the few places in American society today that we can actually talk about race. Whether it's about the NBA dress code, Ozzie Guillen, Barry Bonds, sports fans are talking about race issues, not always in the best ways, but at least they are talking about it. National politicians--Republicans and Democrats--are not, despite every indication that they should be.

3 comments:

How are Barry Bonds' controversial run for the all time home run title and Ozzie Guillen's masterful job managing the White Sox racial issues? These are great performers who just happen to not be whites of northern European extraction. Allegations of steroid abuse that have dogged Bonds and others seem to not have respected ethnic lines, given the disappointment in Mark McGwire's behavior in his congressional appearance. I haven't followed ND's coaching change that closely, but I would tend to agree that Ty Willingham got less than a fair deal, regardless of the reasons. As for Fisher DeBerry, he picked a bad decade to make insensitive statements at USAFA.

I'm not sure that I get your point. Are you saying that Notre Dame is racist because they gave a big name (from the pro's) white coach a 10 year sweetheart deal after firing a black coach with a great first year record, followed by 2 less than sterling years?